Wind giant eyes big Brooklyn lease

The European wind giant Equinor is considering a lease of the 65-acre South Brooklyn Marine Terminal in Sunset Park to handle the logistics and fabrication of an 816-megawatt offshore wind farm that Gov. Andrew Cuomo last week selected it to build.

The Brooklyn deal would likely create hundreds of jobs and spur tens of millions of dollars of investment in the antiquated waterfront facility, where massive wind turbines could be assembled for the project.

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"The effort to bring hundreds of green manufacturing jobs to the Brooklyn waterfront through the reuse of South Brooklyn Marine Terminal as a staging ground for the offshore wind industry would be a major economic boost for the area," a spokesman for the partnership that was selected to operate the marine terminal last year said in a statement. "These are exactly the type of jobs that will ensure manufacturing and maritime uses will be in New York City for decades to come."

Four days ago Cuomo announced two winners of a roughly 1,700-megawatt offshore wind-power procurement that overnight gave the state the largest pipeline of wind energy development in the country. The awards, which also included an 880-megawatt power purchase from another European wind developer Orsted and a partner, are the first of 9,000 megawatts of offshore wind Cuomo has pledged to develop for the state by 2035.

A lot is at stake for the municipalities and facilities vying to secure the manufacture of the initial projects. If the marine terminal is able to secure Equinor as a tenant, it could very well establish the waterfront site as a hub for thousands of megawatts of future projects as well, creating green energy jobs in Brooklyn for years to come.

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The Sunset Park site is especially convenient for Equinor's project, which will be located on a federally owned site known as Empire Wind south of Long Island about 30 miles from New York Harbor. At the marine terminal, propeller blades hundreds of feet in length could be married to massive turbines and the towers that will suspend them over the water. Future maintenance for the wind farm, which will initially consist of about 60 to 80 wind turbines, could also be conducted from the location.

After its selection last week, Equinor stated that its project would create about 800 local jobs in the state. Some will be in the Albany region, where the company said it will manufacture the massive foundations that will secure the lengthy structures to the ocean floor.

The company said it will invest more than $60 million toward port upgrades necessary for its project and spend another $4.5 million on community benefits and workforce development. Separately, the city has stated that it will provide as much as $39 million to renovate the derelict facility. Last year a partnership between Industry City and Red Hook Container Terminal was selected by the city to operate South Brooklyn Marine Terminal, which is next to Industry City in an area that decades ago was a hub of industrial employment.

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